Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Out of Shape

Without the added stress of making New Year's resolutions that I end up feeling guilty about not keeping, I decided to start a little at home exercise program at the beginning of the month. Incredibly, here we are 25 days later and I'm still doing it. Go figure. It's not easy exercising at 6am, but I'm up anyway so why not. I have even, occasionally, done the same little workout again in the evening just to shake myself out of the sitting position I'm in all day.

Mostly I would say things are going well, I have discovered some new muscles (painfully) and also have found my knees hurt. Is this the result of such a sedentary life or do I just need new running shoes?

5 comments:

nickt said...

What kind of exercise are you doing? Is it high impact on your knees (ie: stair climbing)? Is the pain in your joints or in the muscles around the knees?

Getting the right shoe will help, but figuring out why your in pain is the first step.

Blogger_Naut said...

maybe you need orthotics ;)

Unknown said...

"Aerobic Standing Pilates" is what I'm doing. I suppose it could be considered high impact, but there is no stair climbing or anything involved, just a lot of pliƩs and bending. I have no idea if the pain is joint or muscle related.

nickt said...

I found some reviews of what I think is a similar program on amazon. Two people specifically mention how hard it is on knees. It could be that your form is off and your putting too much pressure on your knees (when you extend too far in a lunge) or that your knees just can't take the intensity.

What they recommend for running is to build intensity. Start off with easy runs and over the course of many weeks and months gradually build until you are able to be comfortable at high intensity. Even then, it's not recommended to run at high intensity all the time. Maybe that would translate to what you're doing? Of course, if you're not sure, you could talk to an expert and see if they think getting new shoes will correct the problem.

Unknown said...

Wow - the routine I am using is the same series and it gets mentioned in one of the reviews (I'm doing the Crunch - Fat Burning Pilates). One of the reviews mentioned trying the QuickFix series as a routine that will not hurt the knees. I'm going to check that out. Thanks, Nick!